My limbs were still shaky and I trembled as though I were recovering from a bout of illness, but I did not care. Music roiled and churned within me, pushing at my pores, my eyeballs, my fingers, and I needed to get it out, get it out, or explode.
In the retiring room, I saw that Twig and Thistle had taken the Wedding Night Sonata from my apron pocket and set it back on the klavier, but I was in no mood to compose. Everything was an ungovernable, chaotic mess within me, less music than a cacophony of sound. I sat down on the bench, and pushed, pounded, and played the klavier, pouring into the instrument my relief, anger, surprise, and joy. I improvised, I butchered, I wailed. I gave into the tempest of emotions within me until the storm passed.
In the calm that followed, a violin replied.
I am sorry, Elisabeth.
I understood the Goblin King’s apology as clearly as though he had spoken the words before me. Music had always been the language we shared, a language of love, of laughter, of lamentation. I let him play and play and play until at last I set my hands upon the keyboard and played my mercy.
I thank you, I forgive you. I thank you, I forgive you.
But the violin sang over my absolution, an ostinato of guilt and shame. I tried to join him in the music, to find an accompaniment, a basso continuo, but the Goblin King kept changing the tempo, the key, the time signature, variation upon variation of remorse.
I am a monster. I am a monster. I am a monster.
It went on and on, and I could not get a word in edgewise.
“Fetch him,” I commanded Thistle, who was absentmindedly shredding a pile of discarded foul papers. “Fetch Der Erlk?nig.”
She made a face but did as I asked. But when she returned, she returned alone.
“Where is he?”
For the first time ever, I thought I detected a hint of sheepishness about Thistle’s expression. She mumbled an excuse.
“His Majesty will not come,” said Thistle.
I knew the Goblin King was not bound to my will as my goblin girls were, but I sent Twig to fetch him, hoping the kinder of my two attendants could convince him. But she, too, returned alone.
“What, is Der Erlk?nig too ashamed to face me?” I asked. “I would rather he make his apologies to my person than through his violin.”
“He is in the chapel, Your Highness,” Twig said.
“We do not disturb him when he is in prayer,” Thistle added.
I looked at them, astonished. “What? Surely you goblins don’t give two figs for his God?”
Thistle crossed her arms. “We don’t.”
“We do not trespass upon sacred spaces,” Twig said. “A courtesy you mortals never gave us. We abide by the old laws, but if nothing else, we respect His Majesty’s faith, for who are we to deny the uncanny and unknown?”
This surprised me. In all of Constanze’s tales, goblins had no honor or morals, quick to lie and steal and cheat to get their way. But who was I to question the old laws?
“Fine then,” I said. “I would deprive him of his voice. Fetch me his violin.”
My goblin girls exchanged glances. It would be a useless command.
I made a noise of disgust. “All right. Leave me be, and I shall call him another way.”
Twig and Thistle gave each other another glance, then faded away.
I waited.
I waited for the Goblin King to finish, for the guilt to run dry. I waited for the violin to fall silent so I could make my reply.
I organized my papers and began work on the second movement of the Wedding Night Sonata, the adagio.
You are the monster I claim, mein Herr.
Through the large mirrors lining the retiring room, I watched the river ripple through Salzburg, letting the mood serve as my inspiration. I heard the delicate pizzicato plinks of a violin, droplets of ice melting into spring and summer. Beneath that, the murmuring susurration of a flowing brook. Arpeggios on the fortepiano. I made notes on the paper in front of me. The key had not yet resolved in my mind, but I thought it might be C minor.
I modulated the arpeggios up and down, not with any purpose, just to play with the sound until I heard something that struck me. Nothing, so I began to expand the arpeggios. Better. Some chromatic color. There was tension building there beneath the notes. I liked it. I recognized it. It was the unbearable weight of desire.
I left no room for the Goblin King to reply.
The first movement had been about anger and impotence. The theme thwarted, the melody reaching and never quite resolving its potential until the end. The second movement would be about loss, and about dreams just out of reach. The world above. My body. His body. The throb of desire beat beneath it all, marrying these two movements together.
I made notes to revise the allegro with these new thoughts.